Tag: management

Many seem to agree that organisation culture refers to the organisations’ values, beliefs, habits and how it interacts with different peoples or stakeholders.

Those are certainly some of the dimensions of organisation culture. But are there any others? What about how the culture is incentivised, i.e. its motivations? What about its speed of action, its urgency? Any others?

Would it be fair to explore organisation culture in the following dimensions (and are they the right dimensions)?

values

beliefs

habits, customs and norms

interactions with others

customers

employees

owners

competitors

partners

government

regulators

technology

motivations and incentives

speed of action

dealing with problems

fears

interests

I would like to discuss and explore these further. Only once we understand what is organisation culture, only then can we determine how we understand what creates this culture, so we can work with it, or even “re-boot” it.

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Amongst many things, Google is also well known for its creatively designed office and work spaces. The logic behind the colourful and playful design is to create environments that can nurture creativity and innovation within the people that work in these places. Google is acknowledged as one of the most innovative companies in the past decade or so with a variety of products and services that are significantly impacting and changing our lives.

This is quite a common trait of many tech companies too. And similarly these companies also adopt conditions that are designed to encourage creativity and innovation.

Of course, such conditions are not only confined to office space design. Values, management practices, and leadership play equally big roles.

I believe that environment shapes culture, and in the case of Google and the likes, how much do you think the office and work space design (colourful and playful) contribute towards the respective organisation’s innovative culture?

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We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (“VUCA”) world – where we have very little ability to control or predict what will happen in our near future. This reality is also true in organisations that rely on knowledge, information and ideas, as opposed to activities that rely on a production line system. Unless you work on the factory floor, or some form of production line – chances are you will be dealing with quite an amount of VUCA.

For some time management has been aiming at trying to control, predict and eliminate the VUCA, but it is a losing battle. VUCA is the reality, and no amount of management can eliminate it. After all, you can never really predict nor forecast the future now can you?

Management as we know it was invented at the time of the Industrial Revolution whereby, human capital was just seen as tools in a production line created in order to make widgets at scale, faster and more efficiently. Industrial Age management emphasised control, conformity, predictability and efficiency.

In many situations today, such production lines are increasingly automated or outsourced to cheaper locations. What many organisations have left to do is to respond to the changing customer demands and technology disruptions, amongst many other changes. Unfortunately, management still employs processes and practices that were created for the production line in a futile aim of controlling and predicting outcomes. Continue reading “6 management books as references for Management reinvented for a VUCA world”

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The world is changing so quickly that whatever we know now is quite simply out of date already. What got us here, won’t get us where we want to go next. A new thinking is required.

Economies, like businesses, are stagnating – creating huge stresses within society and environment. No new wealth is created, but wealth is instead being recycled from existing resources. Population is growing, resources are depleting and the economy is plateauing. Social welfare is at risk, as resources become more expensive but wages stagnate with the economy. Distribution of wealth remains unchanged: no new businesses are created, and wealth continues to remain within existing circles. Of course, the rate of stagnation varies from one country / society to another. So the issue of stagnation may be more, or less, apparent in different countries / societies. That being said, the trend of reducing marginal utility is quite commonly seen as countries / societies develop or progress.

To address this reality, big problems have to be solved; we must adapt to changing variables; and create new opportunities and new wealth for society.

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You can have a great strategy, but if the culture is not right then the strategy will fail. What is culture? In simple terms, my view of culture relates to how people act and behave, their habits and norms, their priorities and focuses.

But changing or reshaping culture is not an easy thing. You cannot change how people conduct themselves. You can’t effectively force people who love to spend to suddenly save. You can tell them to do so, remind and cajole them even. But they will not willingly or naturally do so.

However, if you create a hypothetical situation where prices increases sharply, then people will start to save. This can be clearly seen with regards to natural resources such as water. If water is cheap, people will use it with very little thought and often waste it. When water is precious and expensive then people will start to save it.

The same applies in management. If you want a culture of obedience, you create detailed rules and processes (bureaucracy!), you emphasise punishment and fear. If you want a culture of innovation, you allow more freedom especially for people to think different and try new things. You create the space and encourage minds to open.

Don’t spend time trying to get people to behave differently. Work on the systems and processes, not the people.

Don’t bother trying to change people behaviours. Just change your management processes. Identify what kind of culture you want. What behaviours you would like to see. Be very clear on this. Then identify what are the current systems and processes that inhibit these behaviours and those the encourage these behaviours. Start changing those systems and processes.